French Resolutions

This year my resolutions are strong and I have a thirst for change.  Honestly, I haven't written many posts for this blog for a few months for one simple reason.  I'm supposed to tell you wonderful stories about my life here, and since I really can't it's better for me not to write.  To be honest, I do not like Metz anymore.  I do not enjoy teaching English to people who do not wish to learn it.  Moreover, I have no desire to go out in this town anymore.  I know all the streets, shops, restaurants, cafés.  Even meeting new people here brings me no new pleasure.  It's drab routine in a climate where it rains everyday and gets dark at 4pm.  Believe me,  I wish I were not announcing this awful fact, but it's true.

My Christmas break has served me to realize I absolutely must have change, perhaps even drastic change.  For the last couple weeks, I have been working hard to get rid of as many possessions as I can.  So far I've managed to throw out about half.  The destruction actually reinvigorates me.  Have any of you ever felt the pleasure of smashing a table because it's the only way to get it out of an apartment?  My goal is to get down to 5 or 6 boxes but I'm still too far away from that.  Few belongings brings freedom, and face it, you are only mobile when you're light.  I have handed in my notice to escape my apartment and soon plan to quit every single one of my jobs.  Sometimes it takes a leap of fate, a hail mary pass for a better life.  It's possible I'll have regrets.  I really hope not.  I never thought I would identify so much with Tracy Chapman when she sang "I want a ticket to anywhere!"

My life here will always be the same.  I can have the same jobs forever, live in the same flat, buy my groceries in the same supermarket, go to the same cinema.  I do have that security in this town. I acknowledge many people would love to have it.  I have a beautiful view of the cathedral from my window.  Yet, I cannot deal with tedium anymore.  Perhaps this is what is meant by provincial life.

It won't be easy nor swift.  I'm starting as of now.  So, my lesson for you today is, remember, nothing is quick in France.  Rental contracts are not easily broken.  You must give 90 days notice before you can leave an apartment.  Getting electricity, water, phone or internet service disconnected is a headache too.  In France you have contracts with them as well.  Banking is a huge mess. It's difficult to change banks since you are assigned to one particular local agency, the one in which you opened your account.  A Banque Populaire client may not deal with another branch of the same institution.  In some cases, contracts cannot be suspended.  Monthly deposits, bills and tax payments are almost always automatic transactions in France. In addition, as you may know, work is measured out from an end date backward here, not a starting date forward.  For example, when you teach a course they give you a contract with a set number of hours already planned out. After every class you cross out one day.  I suppose it does give job security to see clearly you have guaranteed work in May, but nowadays I tend to see it more like a prison sentence.  For each class I take on, I do time until I'm free from it.  This gives a very different feeling from creating something new and original step-by-step.

All in all, I'll be around Metz for many many more months, but I shall leave.  That day will be ever so sweet!  The big question is where to next?  That, my friends, I have not figured out.  Perhaps you can give me some tips. :)

Winter over?

Today for the first time since October I felt hope. No, it wasn't a warm tropical day, in fact it was grey and chilly outside, but there were some pleasant noticeable changes. At 6pm the sun had not completely set and I could slowly strut through the streets without shivering. That makes a huge difference. I must have had a dazed look on my face all day today. It's so beautiful to know we're moving away from winter. Of course, I've been here long enough to know it could still snow in March and I won't be able to shed my coat till Easter, yet the desperate oppressed feeling is starting to subside. I get it in October when I take my winter clothes out of the closet. Then, those after-Christmas blues set in when I literally wake up in the dark, fight my way to work through the wind and rain, teach like I'm on an assembly line and run home after nightfall to hibernate for two straight months. If my brain were not frozen I would miss those milder winters of years gone by. Could winter be over? Hallelujah. The sap riseth in me.

I've always said climate is by far what I dislike most about la douce France. I often recall that Roman mythological story we studied in high school, the one of Persephone who descends into hell for 6 months of the year. Life disappears as people suffer on earth. The wicked elements rule! I hear Mrs. Coakley lecturing just like yesterday. Time to wake up Ceres! Yes, October to March is literally hell in France. It gets to the best of us. The sun shuns us, punishing us for some terrible original sin. By late afternoon the streets are deserted and you just can't find people anywhere. It's an awful price to pay for the wonderful times we have waiting for us after about April 15th if we're lucky. France is a beautiful country, with amazing historical buildings, parks full of flowers and plants, and outdoor cafés galore, bustling with a continuous thanksgiving. In May there will be concerts, wine-tasting, vernissages. Legends are written about Spring in France. Today I realized those delicious days are coming. No sun yet, but I'm walking on sunshine. That's the power of hope, or maybe, just maybe I've understood the real meaning of groundhog day.

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frenchiflyable.com is now frenchiflyable.blogspot.com

Christmas Dinner, Fancy and French

Christmas dinner with friends
La vie est belle. Chapeau to Evelyne, my friend's mother-in-law! Un vrai cordon bleu.

Menu du jour

Aperitif
Goat Cheese
Mussels pizzetta
Garlic gressin
Champagne

First course
Gingerbread Foie Gras on toasts with chestnut sause
Alsatian sweet white wine

Second course
Homemade salmon blinis with onions, capers, and clotted cream with a touch a lemoncino
Moselle white wine

Trou normand

Third course
Breast of capon
Brussels sprouts rolled in serrano ham
Truffles
Bordeaux dry red

Fourth course
Cheese plate: Cantal tome, munster with cumin and moist ewe cheese
White grapes
Roquette Salad
Banette with sweet norman butter

Fifth course
Raspberry chocolate bûche de Noël
Rum balls
Coffee

Resolutions for 2012 and adieu to wordreferencing

Hey cyber people. I appreciate the emails from people asking me where I have been and why I stopped writing. I'm so sorry but I do have an excuse. I became addicted to something worse than cocaine and heroine combined. It's also embarassing since I've been one of the harshest critics of all those guys who get hooked on some kind internet-wide science fiction game where 50,000 people combat forces of evil (literally each other) senselessly day and night for 7 months.

Anyway the doldrums of our 8 month winter in northern France led me to discover the wordreference forums, the greatest thing for language buffs since the invention of the bilingual dictionary. There are thousands of people from all over the word creating threads on vocabulary, idioms, translations, linguistics, grammar in any language in the world. Got a doubt, it will be resolved. Literally, wordreferece offered to me on a silver platter everything I ever wanted to know about language but never knew I did. The site is amazing. I guess it's like putting a little boy in an endless warehouse full of toys when previously the poor thing only got one little tiny gift each year for Christmas. Moreover he gets instant playmates who strangely enough do not find his interests so weird at all! Who knew he was not alone in the world? He thought he was odd for being excited about the imperfect subjunctive!

Unfortunately, sooner or later Wordreferencing becomes hell. 24 hours a day is not enough time to spend on this site. There are ten subject discussions being created about every minute, many of which you know something about, others maybe not, but all are interesting enough to read and comment on. Members are actually encouraged to give answers on everything too. As they say, we are all participating in the creation of the biggest language encyclopedia in history. It must be perfectly complete for posterity. As such, in the celebration section, members are constantly being given awards. Mr. Salamander wrote his 10,000th post today! Hurray! Tomorrow, is Miss Crumpets birthday so we've made this new thread just for her! She wanted to know the names of all Russian cakes, so here we go! Yay!

For some unknown reason, members get promoted to the status of Moderator. This gives them endless power to wield over other members. Mods get to enforce the WR rules and can comment on all posts or eliminate them at will! And beware! They can also choose to ban you forever from the form too. Soon you will get those private messages from mods asking you to prove this and that detail about yourself, or to admonish you for breaking continually rule number 16, one you never knew existed, and quite honestly it is of so little relevance to anything in daily life, it's absolutely pathetic.
Members also flock together in small little cliques called tagger groups. You see them waiting to pounce on anyone who enters into their circle. Worse yet, they often have blind conviction in their philosophy and will shun posters who dare to disagree. For example, a shocker and breaker for members of XX group are the circumstances in which interrogative words such as "dónde" "cómo" "cuándo" should or should not bear an accent mark!? Say what? Some gangs will kill for principles won't they? Other times groups just take offence to your mere presence in a forum you haven't been invited to. That's not a rule, by the way. Just imagine for a moment that a native French speaker goes into the German-Spanish forum and dares to comment on the best translation of a proverb from one language into another. Be you right or wrong, excuse me, but who invited you to our German-Spanish party? You'll find these mods particular harsh as they try any way possible to get rid of you. Ha ha ha!

In a nutshell, wordreferece can be great... but it has all the inconveniences of an addiction to a recreational drug, plus the hurt of a high school dance where you can't sit at a certain table or run for homecoming king... just because... that's the way it is, mate. Finally it turns into senseless clicking on a machine far worse than a game boy because... face it... you are just mechanically refreshing the same site over and over again... hoping for who knows what... a new translation? Winning some stupid dispute about grammar? Getting an honor? But guess what? Guess what? You'll be answered when and if the someone decides to carry on, and only if a mod or a clique or someone else don't zap you out. Certainly, it's just another clear example of a terrible second reality addiction just waiting to prey on someone living in a dark northern rainy and sad climate where Persephone has been damned to Hades until April at least. I admit I succombed...

Yet, now I'm free. I sent wordreferencing to hell and deleted their cookies from my hard drive. Yes!! I've got an extra two hours per day. So, now I can get back on track and start writing again. It's going to be more free-style impromptu writing this time. I've seen writing too much as a task to refine and polish, which is a major deterent. It must be fun! Anyway, these are my two of my resolutions for 2012.

Happy holidays people, I'm back! Enjoy yourselves! I wish you all the best for the new year. Then get on your resolutions too!